Dancers back on their toes

CUTTING the ribbon . . . Sheila Carter at the new Samantha Jayne School of Dance, with owner Sharon Greenwood, front, second left, and some of the pupils

Famed founder reopens school

A homeless dance school has pirouetted into new premises — with an official opening by a famous choreographer.

Sheila Carter, who has worked on New York’s Broadway and at leading English theatres, first set up the dance school 30 years ago.

She was a well-known choreographer with many amateur operatic groups and at Oldham Coliseum.

She left Oldham to live near Whitby 18 years ago, and since leaving Oldham she has become choreographer for playwright Alan Ayckbourn.

Her friend Samantha Greenwood took over the dance school and renamed it the Samantha Jayne School of Dance and started classes in rooms above Chadderton Library.

But the school was forced out when the library service moved to Chadderton’s new Wellbeing Centre in November, and Oldham Council said it had no money to keep the old library building open.

Now the show will go on as Samantha has found new premises in a unit at the Stockfield Mill in Melbourne Street, Chadderton, a short distance from the old library.

Samantha, who has 150 pupils from primary age to pensioners, and teaches five days a week, said: “We have moved into what was an empty shell but we have done it up from scratch and it is now a purpose-built dance studio, complete with mirrors and bars.

“I am very relieved. All the classes and the timetable are exactly as before.

“It’s lovely that Sheila could come back for the opening, she choreographs all over the world, and is an examiner for the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.”

Shelia’s association with Ayckbourn led her to work with him and Andrew Lloyd Webber on their musical “By Jeeves” and she travelled with them to America.